Histopathology involves the examination of tissue samples, for example human or animal, typically in the course of determining the disease state of the tissue or patient from which it was extracted. A typical process of preparing tissue for histopathological examination involves the following steps:                1 Removal of the Tissue from the Patient. This may be a surgical or other biopsy. This lump of tissue must be uniquely identified so that the doctor and subsequent handlers can identify the tissue and therefore patient that it came from, at a later date.        2 Processing the Tissue to fix it in Wax. This may be done in a tissue processor, and involves placing the biopsy in a container and placing the container in the processor, which replaces the moisture with wax, thus preserving the tissue. Also, the processed tissue is commonly placed on a support and embedded in a block of wax, to assist in the cutting of the tissue during the next stage. At this point the tissue is usually in a single piece and would have an identifier so that the patient and other data could be identified.        3 Creating the Slides. Typically the preserved and embedded tissue is placed onto a microtome and several slices of tissue are cut from the block, each useful slice being placed onto a slide. Usually information relating to the sample is reviewed to determine the number of tests to taken, which dictates the number of slides generated. At this point, the single identifier for the tissue is no longer useful as there are several samples on slides, each usually requiring the application of a different antibody or stain. Thus, each slide must be labelled so that the tissue sample from which they were cut can be identified, and also the individual test to be applied to the sample on the slide is associated with the label. This may be done by, for example, writing the slide information on a label applied to each slide.        4 Applying Antibodies to the Slide. On a Bond-maX instrument, information about each slide is entered into a computer controller, and a slide label is generated. The label may contain various types of information, but on the Bond-maX instrument, a unique identifier is printed onto a separate label, which is then placed onto each slide. The slides may have other labels from previous steps, but the label from the Bond-maX instrument must be the top label. Each slide is then placed onto the Bond-maX instrument, where the labels are scanned. When the labels are scanned, the instrument knows the test to be applied to each slide by the unique slide label identifier given to each slide. Other staining instruments may use a label containing information identifying the protocol (or test) to be applied. The instrument may automatically read the label to determine the test, or the user may place the slide onto an instrument, and instruct the instrument to perform the appropriate test to the slide.        5 Review of the Slides. A pathologist will need to review the slides to determine the disease state of the tissue. A single biopsy may have several sections removed for analysis, and therefore the pathologist may have to review a number of slides from a single patient. It is critical that the pathologist know which slides belong to the patient. In many cases the slides may be relabelled after testing on the various staining instruments to facilitate identification of the test applied, and also long term storage of the tested slides.        
An individual laboratory, such as a pathology laboratory, may process a large number of slides, and the slides may come from a number of different providers, such as doctors or hospitals. Each provider may have their own method of labelling slides to identify the patient and test to be applied. The laboratory where the samples are sent for testing may therefore have to process slides having a number of different label formats. This prior art system allows different laboratories to provide slides with their own labelling system that may be run on a staining instrument, by relabelling for staining and relabelling again so that the label is identifiable by the doctors or hospitals system. This system is useful where a single staining instrument must test samples from a number of different sources, some or all of which are not compatible with the instruments information systems. However, information must be separately input into the instrument and labels must be printed and correctly applied to the slides before the slides can be tested.
Other systems, such as some Laboratory Information Systems, allow all the relevant information required to process a slide to be stored in a database, the pointer to specific information on the patient being contained on the slide label, for example using bar codes. However, this system requires that all the data from a variety of doctors be input into the laboratory information system, and requires all the instruments in the laboratory that require the information to be able to connect to the system to obtain the necessary data. It is useful to solve the problem of identifying slides uniquely where the slide identification system may not be compatible with the systems on the instrument.